BRIDGEPORT -- Following an impassioned plea by the city's airport chief and a private huddle with lawyers, a council committee Thursday OK'd a legal settlement preserving the $400,000 driveway Bridgeport paid developer Manuel "Manny" Moutinho to build to the gates of his waterfront Stratford mansion.

City officials maintain that the gravel driveway over Sikorsky Memorial Airport land is a small but crucial piece of a federally mandated runway safety zone that must be installed by 2016.

The full, 20-person City Council must still vote on what sources have said is the roughly $60,000 settlement with Breakwater Key, a Stratford condominium association that successfully fought the driveway in court.

Because the settlement is pending, the city attorney's office and council are keeping the details under wraps.

Also, on Thursday a memorandum surfaced in which Mayor Bill Finch -- whose administration has been dealing with the fallout of the Moutinho deal since summer -- told the city's labor director he did not know the controversial developer had been hired for the job.

"I ... was not aware that Manny Moutinho had received a contract to conduct work on the road leading to his residence ... until I read it in the Connecticut Post," Finch wrote in the June 14, 2013, letter.

While City Council members have said they were in the dark over the $400,000 deal, negotiated by the Finch administration sometime between summer 2012 and early 2013, the mayor has not publicly adopted that position.

The driveway controversy stems as far back as 2010, when Moutinho asked city officials for permission to relocate an old dirt driveway, also running over airport property, for himself and three neighbors because it flooded.

In 2012, he obtained the permits from Stratford, where the Bridgeport-owned Sikorsky is located.

But Moutinho never moved ahead with the work, so the city hired him to do it.

Finch's administration has maintained that since the old dirt driveway was in the way of the runway safety project, the city was legally obligated to replace it. Bridgeport assumed Moutinho's construction permits in Stratford, waived the competitive bidding process and hired Moutinho's Mark IV Construction firm for the work. The city's purchasing guidelines do not require the mayor to personally approve the contract.

The driveway installation was first reported by the Connecticut Post last June, when it was completed.

The newspaper also outlined Moutinho's long friendship and real estate dealings with Mize's predecessor, John Ricci, who, with the city attorney and purchasing offices, helped arrange to hire Mark IV.

Finch has consistently said he first learned of the ties between Ricci and Moutinho from the newspaper. Following an internal probe, the mayor fired Ricci on Aug. 1, for allegedly failing to reveal he had a conflict. Finch is implementing new ethics guidelines to prevent future problems.

Finch's June 14 letter claiming not to have known of Moutinho's hiring appears to have been submitted as part of the labor office's investigation into Ricci. It was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed months ago by resident Jennifer Buchanan, a critic of the Finch administration.

The city's problems with the driveway worsened on July 2, when a judge sided with the Breakwater Key association's claim Moutinho had not made a strong enough case for building the new driveway through nearby wetlands. Bridgeport authorized the work knowing the lawsuit was pending, and now had to work with Moutinho to salvage it.

Council members focused Thursday on the settlement and the reasons for the runway safety zone.

"My experience with FAA is they don't spend this kind of money on an airport like Sikorsky," she said.

The runway improvements were prompted by a plane crash 20 years ago that killed eight people.

But Mize said Sikorsky helps the FAA alleviate pressure on the region's larger airports.

After a half-hour private discussion with Mize and city attorneys on settlement details, the committee voted.

Councilwoman Michelle Lyons, D-134, a committee co-chairman who has publicly questioned the settlement, only has to vote to break a tie. She said afterward she is still deciding how to vote when the settlement reaches the full council.

Lyons said she wants Mize to provide detailed proof that Sikorsky is an economic benefit to Bridgeport taxpayers.

City Attorney Mark Anastasi told her, "It's a hugely valuable asset. If you lose it, you're never going to get another one."